Sage Rosenfels’ revenge

Remember how I went on and on about how well the Giants schemed and how they had different defensive packages ready for all of the personnel groupings in my last blog entry?

In fact, at one point during the discussion with my dad, he mentioned that the Texans must have some tendencies that the Giants had spotted because they seemed to be ready for everything the Texans were throwing out there at them in terms of how they responded to the different packages the Texans came with.

Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell did an outstanding job of getting his guys ready and putting them in the right spots, but the unsung hero of the gameplan might have come from the other side of the locker room — backup QB and former Texan Sage Rosenfels.

This morning my radio co-host, John Granato, received a text message that said Sage had confided in a friend here in Houston that he helped with preparation for the Texans and that the Giants coaches were extremely thankful to him after the win.

I don’t hate — I congratulate. The fact of the matter is that Sage is no longer a Texan and his job is to help the Giants win football games by any means necessary. If that means sitting in on Tuesday meetings with the defensive coaches and helping while the defensive gameplan is being installed for the week, then that is what he has to do.

This info makes perfect sense because it was almost surreal how Fewell had an answer for every grouping the Texans came with. And before anyone starts getting upset that the Texans haven’t changed much from when Sage was here two years ago, you should keep in mind that the Texans offense (and that of Mike Shanahan’s during his glory years in Denver) isn’t about a getting as many plays into a playbook as possible as well as making wild changes to your playbook each year.

The Texans have a relatively simple run scheme and they use play-action off of it. They have an extremely well-conceived passing attack that was one of the best in the NFL last year and will get much better this year as Owen Daniels continues to make it back to 100 percent after his ACL injury and after Andre Johnson’s high ankle sprain heals.

Basically, the Giants probably watched film on the Texans and decided they had to do everything they could to stop the running game and enlisted Sage Rosenfels’ help in order to have a better understanding about what the Texans wanted to do out of certain formations and personnel groupings since that is one of the reasons they are so good at disguising what they are going to do with their running attack.